Friday, March 21, 2014

Ridley's Believe It Or Not-This Day In History March 21, 2014 World Poetry Day

Ridley's Believe It Or Not--March 21, 2014:  Another full day of March Madness. Kudos to the Stanford of the East winning their first round against Cincinnati and good luck to Stanford and the Cinderella team, the Mustangs of Cal Poly today.  Managed to find these holidays of note to accompany World Poetry Day and to go with the factoids and quote (actually an original poem in honor of the day). 
              1. World Poetry Day--absolutely a first rate holiday, be you a fan of rhyme, limericks, free verse, blank verse or haiku---great day to go to my poetry blogs mentioned below.
              2. National Puppy Day--celebrated since 2006 to honor man's best young friends and create awareness on puppy mills and the suffering of homeless puppies.
              3. International Day of the Forests--created by the U.N. in 2012 to promote the role of forests as critical parts of our ecosystem and to seek means of preserving them--deforestation of the rain forests today a major environmental and social concern.
              4. National Common Courtesy Day--celebrating sadly a lost art especially in the halls of Congress and the White House or in restaurants and movie theaters with cell phone usage.
On this day in:
              a. 1960 in Sharpeville, South Africa, police opened fire on Black unarmed demonstrators, killing 69, including 8 women and 10 children, and wounding 180, including 31 women and 19 children. Many of the dead and wounded were shot in the back and their sacrifice marked the beginning of the isolation of South Africa from the international community due to apartheid and is commemorated today by The International Day to End Racial Discrimination and Human Rights Day in South Africa. 
              b. 1980 in what has to rank as a major "oops," the word "control" became the first typo in the history of the Time Magazine cover, being spelled "cotrol." Wonder whether the proofreading staff lost any jobs or whether the error was on purpose to speed the acquisition of spellcheck.
             c. 1999 Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones became the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon. Their non-stop flight took far less than David Niven's 80 days, clocking in at 19 days, 21 hours and 47 minutes.
 Be it simple "roses are red, violets are blue"
 Or deeper sonnets, sagas, limericks or Haiku
 Enjoy a poem to elate, emote, weep, laugh or inspire
 After eyes weary, bleary reading contracts to tire
 Prose with subsections and references is like the 405 on a Friday rush hour
 But a poem is an uncrowded autobahn to a date with a creative, higher power!
 © March 21, 2014 the Alaskanpoet, in honor of World Poetry Day.
   Please enjoy the 140 character poems on events of interest on my twitter account below (if you like them, retweet and join almost 140 growing followers and please follow me) and follow my blogs. Always good, incisive and entertaining poems on my blogs--click on links below. www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com for poems on the Mustangs going to the Dance with a losing record; to honor Cindy Abbott, a half blind 54 year old mother suffering from a rare disease who competed in last year's Iditarod until forced out with a broken pelvis after 600 miles; on Bode Miller and the human spirit; for Cupid on Valentine's Day; to honor Cory Remsburg to join a great collection of my poems to inspire, touch, emote, elate and enjoy. Go to Rhymes On The Newsworthy Times for poems on the death of Pastor Fred Phelps, founder of the Westboro Baptist Church; Obama's "sanctions" compared to Rolling Thunder 49 years ago:  Mustangs advance in the Dance to await the Shockers; Russian Roulette with Putin; EPA's war against a Wyoming family; on Jolly's upset win over Sink in the House's 13th District of Florida; China's red line on war in Korea; De Blasio's payback to his union contributors by attacking charter schools; Rutgers' faculty despicable attempt to ban Condi Rice from being a commencement speaker; Newport Beach's assault on recovery homes, including the Ohio House; on students protesting Keystone XL as the world's largest oil producer militarily occupies the Crimea: the banning the wearing of the American flag on Cinco de Mayo to join numerous other comments on news events always in rhyme of course.

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